Cranial cash clash: A fun money quiz

You think you know a lot about managing your money. You read Moneyville, after all.

Well, you can find out how deep your knowledge is - and how you compare to your friends and family members - with a new tool released by the Investor Education Fund.

The Cranial Cash Clash borrows tricks from a popular TV show originally hosted by Regis Philbin, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It has an entertainment factor you won't find in other quizzes.

You get 30 seconds to answer each multiple choice question and you get more points if you reply quickly. You can respond after the time runs out, but you get fewer points as a penalty.

You're given a few ways to improve your score, which you can use once per game. You can ask to change the question text, freeze the timer for 15 seconds or remove two incorrect answers.

The three episodes so far - again, think of a TV series - are about debt, investing and scams. There will be a bunch more to come and continual improvements.

The IEF, a non-profit organization started by the Ontario Securities Commission, had a few ulterior motives in developing the tool.

• The federal Financial Literacy Task Force, which made 30 recommendations last February, said there was a gap in the market for tests that helped people assess their own savvy.
• After doing the quiz, you're linked to the right resources online to boost your knowledge and fill the gaps. You get information that is customized to your needs.
• Not only don you learn from your mistakes, but the IEF learns from them, too. By finding out where people's knowledge is weak, it can strengthen its own educational efforts.

Tom Hamza, who heads the IEF, says you can share this with your Twitter and Facebook contacts and compare their results with your results. (I suggested he add Linked In as well, where I spend lots of time.)

Let's hope he succeeds in turning humdrum into "Hey, I like that." Efforts to make financial facts fun are to be applauded.

I got 15,020 points on the Scam Exam. Can you beat that? Let's compete.